Come From Away

By Joseph Green

At the eastern end of the Canada-United States border, the foggy islands of the Bay of Fundy face a still older frontier — where fishermen challenge the sea, from communities anchored in time.
When American industrialist Walter Lismer tries to impose rapid change and local youth Paul Russell falls for his daughter, waves of conflict will test the toughness — and the tenderness — of “from-away” and island hearts.
Come From Away is set in the early 1950s and was first published in 1981, to wide acclaim.
This re-issue brings back an era when life on sea and shore was forceful and direct, and community judgement could reshape lives.

“The most impressive novel of the season.”
­— Globe and Mail
“An extremely accomplished novel from an unknown writer, blessed with page-turning comic verve and acute social observation.” — Toronto Star
“Seldom has the lilt of a maritime accent been as successfully represented on the printed page as it is in this unassuming tale of a boy’s coming of age on an Atlantic island.” — Maclean’s Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Green
• Release date: Aug 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9780995217720

Joseph Green

Joseph Green is the pen name of the author. He is a Canadian of partly American heritage, and has been a fisherman, merchant mariner, editor and publisher, and public-service executive.

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ComeFromAway_FC.jpg

Published by Friar Rose Press

ISBN 978-0-9952177-3-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-0-9952177-2-0 (ePub)

Copyright © 1981 and 2021, Joseph Green

All rights reserved: no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or other, except by a reviewer, without express permission of the publisher.

Published in Canada

First published by Oberon Press, Ottawa, 1981; reissued by Friar Rose Press, Ottawa, 2021 ([e-mail])

No character in this work of fiction is based on a person alive or dead. Characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real.

Also by Joseph Green:

The Citadel Summit (novel)

In memory of two teachers:

Mary Mitchell

~

Lucie Hainer

Chapter 1

Better get out there, Paulie.

Yeah, guess so, said Paul.

Tom Quentin’s trumpet was starting one of the old songs they always played at island dances, a waltz whose name Paul had never learned. People were moving toward the floor. But why should I have to dance, he thought, or shake hands with people, and answer foolish questions about what I’m goin’ to do?

With a start, Paul noticed the principal coming in. He sauntered away toward the far end of the hall, feeling conspicuous. Then he saw Patty-Lee. Her graduation dress shining, she sat at the end of a folding bench, talking with some other girls; he could crouch beside her and listen. She looked up with a friendly, cousin’s smile.

One a them good old songs, Paul said, with mock seriousness. He propped himself against the wall, near her. In a moment he could slide down, back to the wall, safe with his cousin. Everybody’s gotta dance when they play them good old songs.

Patty-Lee stood up.

I’ve just been waitin’ for you to ask me, Paulie.

Her hand felt wet. Streamers, balloons, class banner and dresses around him passed into a wavery blur. He mustn’t look at his feet. He bumped into a married woman, started from habit to touch his glasses, realized what he was doing and grabbed hold again of Patty-Lee’s hand. He wanted to grin at her as if to say, ain’t this some foolish, but she was smiling at someone dancing by. It was his parents. Everyone was dancing by. He tried to dance toward the back of the hall, where there were no watchers. Patty-Lee seemed to pay no attention.

By the time the song ended, Paul had danced and pulled Patty-Lee to the rear of the hall. She led him back through the maze of couples to the bench and left to dance with someone else. Paul recognized a car motor sounding outside. As a thumping square dance began to swing the crowd, he walked to the door.

Congratulations, Paulie, said someone under the basketball net.

Yeah, thanks.

Gonna help out the old man on the boat?

Yeah, guess so.

At last he was outside. He walked up the rock-wrinkled incline toward the woods. Sammy Jordan had bounced his old pre-war Plymouth over ledges and through trees to get to the perch overlooking the hall.

From the car window, William Quentin stuck out his big hand.

What say, boy?

Don’t shake hands with that Christless gannet, said Teddy Jordan from the back seat.

Big Sammy Jordan turned to face Teddy. Booder, don’t talk like that to a man with a mainland flower in his buttonhole. Teddy had gotten his nickname from his father, describing him lazing around the boat like a big fat Oriental Booder.

Down by the hall door, a woman between two men smiled up toward their voices, her face glowing as she stepped into the hall’s light and music. People were singing and stamping to the square dance. From a parked car came

Maggie Sapper’s squeal. Suddenly Paul felt like going back inside to his graduation.

Instead he got into the car. Sammy bounced the old Plymouth down over rocks, then roared out past Emily’s store, where Lucian Webber was selling hot dogs out the back window. Heads turned to watch as Sammy slewed onto the main road, gravel flying all the way across to Calvina Webber’s lawn.

Where ya headed, anyways? asked William.

They were hurtling past Burt’s store, the darkened school house, and Crost-the-Bridge houses, toward the Beach Road along Palisade Bay. Sammy leaned back and tilted up his cap.

Me and Paul is entitled to a sup.

But I ain’t got no more rum, said William.

Sammy sent the car slewing to the right. It shivered and shook through sand-grass and bogged to a halt at the high-water mark of seaweed and driftwood.

They got out. Sammy rummaged under the ramp plank of an old twine-shed built on posts over the beach.

Looka that. Never know what you’ll find.

He held out a pint.

Give us that, till I throw the cap away, said Teddy.

He drank. William and Sammy followed, the rum smell mixing with that of the beach. Paul looked nervously at the trail of dust hanging over the road under the quarter moon.

I s’pose they’ll be somethin’ said now about me speedin’, said Sammy, following Paul’s gaze. But you got to do somethin’, graduation time. He handed Paul the bottle.

What kinda rum is it, anyways? said Paul.

Gin, said William.

Paul drank, and tried to keep his face from twisting.

Here, boy, said William Quentin, drink some orange beer for a chaser.

Paul sloshed the soda in his mouth. A warm numbness from the gin spread across his shoulders. He could see the lighted hall and hear the music from the dance across the water.

Fat Teddy Jordan climbed up and stood spraddle-legged on the old shed’s ramp.

Dear brethren, amid the chaos and confusion I say unto you …

There was a time, continued William.

When dogs shit lime, said Sammy.

And monkeys chewed tabac, they all four said, and then yelled across the water to the village, Paul the loudest:

"And little girls

Asked little boys

To stick it up their crack!"

After they supped the pint, they had to push the car out of the sand. They yelled and laughed as the motor raced and the wheels spun. Then Sammy began cruising the village, eying a certain house. William found some beer in another hiding place. Paul dared take only a little.

I better get home now, I guess, he said.

Your father ain’t gonna care if you’re out late graduation night, said Sammy. All’s is, I’ll tell him you was havin’ a sup.

Jesus, don’t tell him that, will ya?

Why yes, I’ll tell him. Gonna fish with Jack Russell, you gotta drink the rum.

Oh Jesus, no, Sammy, don’t say nothin’.

Okay, Paulie.

Paul realized he’d been teasing.

Come on, Paulie, we’ll find a party, said William, a house fulla young stuff.

Put that graduation ring on the old dingin’ finger, said Teddy, and we’ll mouse onto the women.

No, I gotta get home. Told Mum and Dad I would, Paul lied. They’re waitin’ up for me.

As Sammy drove him home, Paul told himself that maybe his parents did expect him for some little ceremony. He remembered chlorophyll was supposed to hide your breath; from the spruce tree in the front yard of their house, he took needles to chew on. Inside, he found the living-room empty. He swallowed the bitter needles and started up the stairs.

Paulie! said Jack’s voice.

He went to the kitchen door and opened it just enough to stick his head in.

There, said his father, is the future.

No, said Bud Hardy.

Bud was sitting on the woodbox, half behind the kitchen stove. Jack sat by the table. A pint of the Demerara rum called Black Death stood on a chair between them.

No. No. No, said Bud.

Oh yes, said Jack.

Bud shook his head.

Oh no.

Oh yes.

Jack leaned forward, his burly shoulders hunching up the unfamiliar suit jacket. His white shirt made his weather­roughened face look redder. Mister man, if you doubt that boy, you are wrong.

We was better off before that high school was ever put here, said Bud, quickly skirting dangerous ground. They don’t learn nothin’ there and they don’t wanta learn nothin’ there.

Paul started for the stairs. Couldn’t even make a corned-beef and mayonnaise sandwich, he thought, with them two there.

Paulie!

What?

Come here.

I’m goin’ to bed.

Come here, said Jack.

Christ, Paul hissed to himself. Aloud, he said: I’m already upstairs.

After a pause, Jack said, Don’t then.

A young fella used to have to work, said Bud. But the bunch a them in that high school, with that crowd from away teachin’ ’em …

I am talkin’ about the future, said Jack.

I know as much myself, continued Bud.

You ain’t got the knowledge.

Christ, Wall Street Archer knows as much, and he’s foolish.

You ain’t got the knowledge, said Jack. Bud, dear, you lack the knowledge.

Well, what’s that one … what’s Paulie gonna do now, with a high-school education, on Palisade?

Just whatever he wants. Because he’s got the knowledge!

Paul closed the bedroom door. What would them two know about knowledge, he thought; or more important, wisdom.

He let his good clothes fall to the floor. Then he sat on the bed and looked at himself for a long time in the bureau mirror, staring into his wide eyes. A graduate of Palisade high school, he said finally, and crawled under the quilts.

Chapter 2

Paulie, called Helen from downstairs.

Haah?

Are you gettin’ up?

Haah?

His head ached and his stomach felt funny from the beer and gin. He closed his eyes again.

The screen door slammed. Jack’s voice lifted through the window and Paul sat bolt upright.

As I walked one day down the streets of Laredo … sang Jack.

The gate thudded shut and his footsteps crunched on the gravel road.

His mother called again.

Paulie, will you go to the store for me?

The store? Going there the day after graduation was alarming.

Yes, for groceries.

Why didn’t you tell Dad to get ’em?

He’s goin’ to ground out the boat, high water. Later he wants you to help him paint the bottom.

At the stairs he started to click his heels on the steps, then put a hand to his stomach and walked down slowly.

From the open hot-closet over the stove, he took a piece of leftover toast, hoping its special dry taste, crumbly yet solid, stiffened by butter, would soothe his stomach. He took the grocery list.

On the road, the quaking red mud of May had settled into June hardness. As he walked along, Paul fired rocks at telephone poles, always missing. He failed to notice Esther Seguin until he was too far down the road to duck into the woods. Humped over like a toadstool, Esther was weeding her little flower and vegetable garden.

Just the man I wanted to see, Paul muttered.

At sight of him, Esther stood up and came over to the fence. From her grey hair, pushed-back spectacles gleamed upward in the sun.

Just the man I wanted to see, she said. Paulie, suppose you could mow this little bit of lawn for me?

Probably won’t have time, Esther. Goin’ on the boat.

Oh, that’s right, dear. And you graduated. She put her spectacles on to look at him. Goin’ to fish herrin’ with Jack?

Ayuh.

Not goin’ away to school nowheres?

Nope. He had no marks. But away in a good school, he knew, he would have learned. He might have bested the smartest pupils in the world, making inventions even before he graduated, and winning every kind of scholarship.

Well, I’ll have to get somebody else to mow if you’re gonna go fishin’. But that’s all right dear.

I just meant, you know, Esther, if I could . . .

That’s all right dear. Listen to that comin’ now, said Esther. The highway road ain’t safe.

Yeah, said Paul, grinning with relief at the distraction.

Them cars was tearin’ up and down all night, after that graduation dance. You’re a good boy, Paulie. Don’t you start that on the highway road.

Nope. Not without a car, he thought.

He walked hurriedly down the road toward Duncan’s Hump, calculating the distance of the car’s noise, sure now that it was Harvey Pierce coming loud and fast down the narrow, twisting road from Palisade Cliffs. Paul wanted to see no one today, least of all Harvey. He had to get to his secret woods-route. He began running in his neck-craning gallop.

He passed Duncan’s Hump and made Jonah’s Hollow barely in time to duck behind a tree before Harvey’s old Ford flew over the Hump. A girl shrieked joyfully as steel scraped the road. The car roared up the other side of Jonah’s Hollow and began backfiring down Benedict’s Hill, toward Leazar’s Meadow and the village.

Paul brushed at a cobweb that caught his face; then, exasperated, he hit the branch the web hung on. Cold dewdrops fell on him. He began running through the long grass and low bushes, past Jonah’s abandoned house at the bottom of the lane, and along the wooded beach cliffs over the secret path he’d pioneered. Usually when he got to Leazar’s Meadow, the only open spot on his route, he peeked out before leaving the woods to make sure there were no old men come down to look offshore who might discover him. As he stopped at the usual tree, a spruce bough raked his face. Paul punched at it furiously. Then he found himself striding heedlessly into the open.

He kept going across the grassy depression where people said Leazar was buried. I don’t care if he rises right up, Paul said aloud, and stamped the ground harder against dead Leazar, dead Jonah, dead Duncan of Duncan’s Hump, dead Benedict of Benedict’s Hill, the half-dead Esther Seguin, the should-be-dead Bud Hardy, and all the rest who would keep him here and laugh at him and watch him till he died.

His secret path turned left, through thick young spruce and past the open Knoll with its apple blossoms, where everybody said they took girls. The path would come out by the Hall and post office. But Paul turned right instead, through older, wilder, wind-thickened spruce woods. Trying to run, holding his glasses, he struggled past scratching branches.

At last he clambered out upon the rocks of Angel’s Head. Across a narrow, murmuring strip of water, the flowered islet that was the bowed head itself glowed warm in the sun. Behind Paul, tall spruces made the topmost curve of the angel’s wing.

He looked across Palisade Passage to the purple-distant woods of the mainland.

I’m goin’ away! he shouted.

As if to match this moment of decision, the sky’s blue suddenly seemed to turn solid and perfect. He shouted again, loud and long toward the mainland, daring himself to have no care if the village heard:

I’m goin’ away!

Chapter 3

Coming in from the bright sunlight, Paul stumbled on the cracked wooden threshold of the grey-shingled post office. Cecil the postmaster had shut the mail window; behind it, he was sorting the mail that had come on the first ferry. Paul edged into the corner behind the unlit stove and surreptitiously brushed twigs from his sweater. He glanced covertly around at the crowd of regulars, his eyes shining; they could have no inkling of the decision burning in his brain.

No dear, that’ll never work out, said Calvina Webber, the Raven.

Why shouldn’t it? said Jean Heath. The only young woman there, she was wearing shorts. Judy’s not the first girl on Palisade that’s had to get married.

If that was all there was to it . . .

I don’t believe all that old business anyway, said Jean.

Say no more, dear.

Calvina shook her head as if to lock her final words into the air and went into a meaningful silence.

Paul knew it was because of him, the youngest there and the only male. Anyway, he told himself, he knew what the Raven meant. People were saying Sammy Jordan shouldn’t marry Judy because his grandfather had probably illicitly fathered Judy’s mother, making her and Sammy cousins. If he knew, Sammy wouldn’t care anyway, thought Paul, recalling his slow fun-headedness and the drunken struggle with the car in the sand.

A laugh escaped Paul. Calvina’s head swivelled like a bad­tempered horse.

Paulie! cried Calvina. That was the best thing all night when you was up there. Beatrice, was you to the graduation?

Yes, Calvina, said Beatrice. My daughter graduated.

They gave Paulie a helmet in case he bumped into somethin’ when he walked around readin’, continued Calvina. That was some comical! I said, that’s just what it wants for that boy!

I’m gonna say somethin’ back, thought Paul. I am. I am, you fart-balloon, because today I decided. I gotta say somethin’. What?

The wood and oilcloth slide below the picture of the King opened. Lots a mail today, said Cecil. Lots a mail today.

I hope it’s somethin’ besides bills! cried Calvina. Somethin’ besides bills!

Paul waited as the women crowded by the mail window. I was gonna say somethin’, I was, he told himself. He consoled himself by thinking of his poem about Calvina.

This Mr. Lismer’s gettin’ lots a mail, by the jumpins, said Cecil. A whole box of it waitin’ for him.

Send it over to the factory, said Calvina. He’s supposed to be comin’ today.

Oh, I never knew that, said Jean Heath.

I thought everyone knew that, whooped Calvina victoriously, as she swept up her mail.

Well, I didn’t, said Jean.

She let Calvina pass and followed her out. So that only Paul could see, she stuck out